A few quotes from the conference call

Tuesday marks the weekly Pac-12 weekly coaches teleconference, where reporters have a chance to ask questions of every conference head coach.

As always, a few interesting nuggets along the way. …

— Arizona is this week’s UW opponent and coach Rich Rodriguez said he hopes the bye week helped the Wildcats bounce back mentally and physically from the overtime loss to Stanford two weeks ago. “Certainly every coach has the same kind of thing, that 24 hours after the game if you win or lose you move on. Some (losses) linger a little bit but I didn’t think that one lingered anyway. We needed the bye week in the worst way for injuries. We will see if we get a couple of guys back — we were a really banged up football team at that point so we’ll see if we get a couple of guys healthy.”

— Asked about Washington’s defense, Rodriguez said: “They are athletic. They’ve got some really good pass rushers, guys that can cover, athletic at linebacker. Scheme-wise they are not giving up big plays — they’ve go a lot of guys around the ball. And even though it’s a first-year scheme, they seem to understand what they are supposed to do on each and every play.”

— UW coach Steve Sarkisian, asked about the struggles of UW’s offense, said: “We’ve played some really good teams, we’ve endured some injuries and we are getting better. I thought we are showing some significant progress in the running game and our consistency in the passing game will continue to improve.”

— Sarkisian, asked about UW’s improvement in pass defense, said “I think we’ve got some players that have matured in the back end” and then said Desmond Trufant “is having a tremendous season so far” and said the emergence of Marcus Peters and Tre Watson has helped solidify the other corner spot and listed the guys who have been playing at safety and said that spot has also been playing well.

— He also elaborated as to what the players in the secondary are doing well to say
Wilcox “has done a nice job of putting the best athletes on the field, which in turn has allowed Shaq Thompson to play more, Travis Feeney to play more. We do a nice job of getting sticky on routes and re-routing guys, and then ultimately making plays on the ball and being confidence when we get our chances to make plays on the ball.”

— Asked about Arizona’s offense, he said “they have great rhythm when they throw the ball. (Quarterback) Matt (Scott) knows where he wants to go with the ball and he’s got an extremely quick release. They have some big wide receivers who can win one-on-one matchups and coach Rodriguez has a nice system in place to get one-on-one matchups and then take advantage of them when they get them.”

— USC coach Lane Kiffin said his team didn’t have a good day throwing the ball Saturday but also said “a lot of credit goes to Washington, their new staff, obviously led by Justin, hey are doing a great job. They are 12th in the country in pass defense. Trufant is playing really well and then they changed corners and put the freshman, Marcus Peters, in there and he played really well in that game and stepped up for them. They are doing really well on defense and especially in the back end, those guys are playing good.”